How to Draw a Snowman (Easy 8 Step Guide)
This guide shows a simple step by step way to draw a snowman. It provides detailed illustrated examples and easy to follow instructions.
The snowman in the example is drawn with what could be called a “classic look”. Meaning that it has a carrot for a nose, sticks for arms and is wearing a Santa hat with a scarf.
The snowman is shown from a 3/4 view (slightly turned to one side) which is a good choice for this particular drawing. If for example you were to go with a front view instead the carrot would just look like a circle (not the best way to show off it’s shape).
Start the drawing using a regular pencil and make light lines that you can easily erase. You will need to do so in a couple of the steps (when adding the hat, scarf and one of the arms). You can darken your lines by tracing over them once you have all parts of the snowman outlined.
Step 1 – Draw the Snowman’s Body as Three Snowballs
Begin by drawing the main body of the snowman. Show this as a stack of three large snowballs. Draw the largest one at the bottom followed by a smaller one in the middle and the smallest one on top.
Make the outlines of the snowballs fairly rounded on the sides but somewhat flatter on their tops and bottoms. This will make it look like they can actually be stacked together without rolling off of one another. Also, make the outlines slightly uneven and asymmetrical so that the snowballs look natural.
Step 2 – Draw a Pair of Sticks for the Arms
Sticking out of the body’s middle portion draw the arms. As already mentioned, in this example they are a pair of sticks. Draw the sticks angled upwards with splits on their ends.
In this case the sticks are drawn fairly thick so that they look more like actual arms.
Because the snowman is slightly turned to one side the base of the arm facing away from the viewer is hidden behind the body (right side of the drawing). The base of the opposite arm (turned towards the viewer) will instead “cut” into the body’s outlined and you can erase a little bit of the snowman’s middle portion when adding it in.
Step 3 – Draw the Face With a Carrot for a Nose
With the main parts of the snowman’s body outlined draw the face. Start with the eyes. Position these towards the upper middle part of the head.
Classically, a snowman’s eyes are a pair of charcoals which usually are not perfect is shape, however, for a nicer looking drawing make them fairly round as in the example.
Above the eyes draw a pair of slightly curved eyebrow.
For drawing the eyes of a person (in a cartoon style) see:
8 Examples of How to Draw Eye Expressions
Draw the snowman’s nose as a carrot pointing to one side. Make it wide at the base and narrower as it goes out towards the tip.
Draw the mouth with an upwards curve to give the snowman a smile. Also draw a little curve on each of it’s ends to give a hint of cheeks being pushed up by the smile.
Step 4 – Draw a Santa Hat on the Head
With the face added you should have a basic snowman that you can then “dress up”. Star with the hat.
Add the hat starting with it’s bottom rim. This should cover cover the upper part and sides of the head. You can erase the area of the head that the hat covers after drawing this part of it.
Next, draw the upper part of the hat with it’s pointy tip curving down to one side of the head. At the end of the tip draw a pom pom.
To make the pom pom look fluffy draw some splits on it’s end as shown in the example.
Step 5 – Draw a Scarf Between the Head & Body
After drawing the hat also add a scarf.
First, outline the part that wraps around between the head and the body as shown in the example. Afterwards, erase the part of the head and body that it covers.
Next, add one end of the scarf coming out from underneath the wrapped part and hanging down. Erase the area of the wrapped part that it overlaps.
For drawing a more detailed scarf see the following tutorial:
How to Draw a Scarf Step by Step
Step 6 – Draw the Buttons Along the Body
To finish the line drawing of the snowman draw some buttons running down along the middle of it’s body. Just like the eyes the buttons on a snowman are generally made of charcoal. Again, similar to the eyes draw them to be fairly round in shape (but not perfectly so).
To show the curvature of the snowballs that the snowman is made up of draw the buttons closer to the middle of each snowball slightly farther out. Draw the buttons near the top and bottom slightly farther back.
Step 7 – Color the Snowman
An easy way to color the snowman is with colored pencils but you can also use markers for some of it’s parts to get brighter looking colors.
Make the hat grey, the band around it and the scarf red, the nose orange and the arms/eyebrows brown.
Make the eyes black but leave tiny white spots inside of them (for the reflections).
Make the buttons a dark grey (you can just use a regular pencil) and similar to the eyes leave a little white reflection inside each of them. Although, both the eyes are the buttons are supposed to be charcoal, making the buttons grey will make them stand out a little less creating more focus on the snowman’s face.
Leave the body of the snowman white.
Step 8 – Add Shadows to the Drawing
To finish the drawing add some shadows to make it appear a little less flat. You create these by lightly darkening the appropriate areas using a regular pencil.
In this example the light is coming from somewhere above the snowman. Show this, place the shadows along the bottoms of it’s following parts:
- Rim of the hat
- The nose
- Pom pom
- Each snowball
- Arms
In addition to the above also fully darken the inner side of the scarf.
Finally, to make the snowman look like it’s actually sitting on top of something add grey shadow underneath it. Make this oval in shape.
Conclusion – Drawing a Snowman is Like Building One
Drawing a snowman is somewhat similar to building one. First, construct the body, then add the details of the face and finally dress it up. Not only is this fairly intuitive it’s also a good overall approach to drawing. Generally, you want to start with the largest and/or most important parts of your subjects and then move on to the smaller and less important details.
For more similar tutorial also see the following:
